It’s been a while since I sat down and wrote a post here, so I thought I’d write at least something while I have a few minutes of extra time. Quite a bit is happening around me at the moment which would explain my absence from my weblog (and other messengers). I’m just closing up the first part of my training to become better at my primary job. It’s actually nice to get back into it full-time again, but it’s really exhausting. I am also back to shift work which means that I go in tonight, leave, then wake up about 6 hours later to start the process all over again. Not fun, but it comes with the type of work I do, so I can’t complain too much.

People Person

I realised that I probably isolate myself from people a lot more than I should. I think working in IT will do that to a person, especially when they work for themselves and work from home. I would just attend a meeting or two per week, and then that was most of my social interaction. At the same time, my main career was on hold and ignored. I do like what I do, but I think sometimes my anxiety and social anxiety likes to take over at times and it just makes me panic a bit. I’m trying so hard to bust through it so I can live a life where my gut isn’t all messed up all the time, and I can be a bit more of a social person.

New Technology

To support my ongoing work in IT, I decided to get myself one of the 27 inch iMacs (the ones with the 5k display). I haven’t had much time to sit around and mess with it though which is really, really hard for me because I really love getting stuff in the mail, and better yet, I love opening boxes with new computer equipment. I think the first thing I did was install Steam and Starbound. I don’t even think that I bothered updating anything else after I opened it. There really wasn’t too many software updates since this computer is basically a month from being released.

So far, so good. It’s so much easier on my eyes.

I still have my 24 inch iMac sitting on the floor and feel a little sorry for it. He’s 10 years old this year and it still works really well despite having to replace the hard drive and a sometimes-malfunctioning graphics card. I don’t know what to do with it yet. I did sell it to my partner for $150 but it’s nice to have around. I used it for the whole day over the weekend and it was really well-behaved. It made me feel bad that I was replacing him, but 10 years is a really good run, wouldn’t you say?

Upcoming Vacation

My partner and I are heading off to Mornington Peninsula after my training completes. We haven’t had too much time together since he’s been back, so this will be good. I keep getting a little snippy with him because of my workload and the fact that I need to do about 12 things at one time. He’s been really good to me and he’s done a lot even though he’s still a bit sore from his surgery. He takes care of me very well but maybe it’s not working the other way around right now. I expect to get back into the groove of things once things calm down around here.

So for now, that’s it. I still have a while to go, so hopefully I can post sooner. There are a ton of things on my mind which have the unfortunate side effect of knowing not what to say when I have so much to say. It makes it really hard. A lot of those things are just emotions and thoughts about people in general and I guess a little bit about my mental health too. I think sometimes it’s good to get those things out in the open, but right now, I just need to stay calm and collect those thoughts for another day!

One of the downfalls about what I do, workwise, is that I can’t really talk about it here. It frustrates me a bit because there’s a lot of work- and study-related stress in my life right now. That’s why I haven’t really been here, because I’ve had to write in a journal every day as part of it, so by the time I finish, I’m not interested in writing anything here.

What I will say is that people sometimes piss me off. GOD I really wish I could say more here, but ethically and legally, I can’t. I will say that if a family member moves 1000 km away to be closer to you, you should at least look after them when they need it.

I’m going to have to leave it at that because I really want to leave my work life out of this blog. I’ll post something more upbeat soon, I’m sure.

For a while, I forgot that I had a weblog! Oops. It’s a good thing because something’s been on my mind lately. And before I start, this isn’t targeting one person, or one situation, but it definitely seems to happen over and over.

Basically, I have a really difficult time being assertive. I think that’s one of those traits that I got from my “sheltered” childhood and my mother’s personality.

When I have to say “no”, this is how it feels.

I have a really hard time telling people things that I know will potentially upset them. So, I end up sacrificing a lot of myself to make other people happy. When I decide to make a decision that goes against what other people want, I end up feeling like shit and it starts to preoccupy my mind in a really bad way.

For example, I’ve known for several months that I will have to do training from Monday to Friday this month for at least 8.5 hours a day. I’m also doing it about 3 km/1.9 miles from my place, so I don’t have to do my usual 160 km/ 100 mile traveling every day. Right now, I am working/studying about 20 hours a week, not including the 10 hours a week (or more) that I spend traveling. What I’ll be doing this month will be quite laborious. A lot of physical work so by the time the weekend comes around, I will, understandably, want to relax and do absolutely nothing.

I know that sounds awful, but I really require some time alone or I’ll go insane. Due to the nature of this training and being in the public, I’m not going to get very much of that.

My partner is also still in India and coming back in less than 10 days (and I haven’t seen him for months), so I need to get my place clean and ready for him. I have to do that over the weekend because it’s my only “free” time. So things are pretty full-on for a while.

So for past week or so, I’ve been re-emphasizing that I’m super busy. I can’t say that it’s easy and I still feel like crap that I can’t do things with and for people this month, but it is what it is. Like yesterday, I had to argue with my friend (for 2 hours) that I can’t help him move more than 1 day this week and why next weekend is off-limits. It was very painful and exhausting.

And see what I’ve done here? I feel like I’ve had to explain my reasons why I’m too busy for the next month! And even when I explain, no one believes me! This is what happens constantly. I end up feeling like a shit head because I am busy or need to look after myself during a time that is going to take me some time to adapt to. All I want is to do really well with my training, and to be able to spend time with my partner who I haven’t seen in a really long time. And this is temporary. It’s just a month-long craziness that I need to concentrate on and not have all this needless guilt in my head.

It’s so much easier said than done. I just lack assertiveness and I’m not sure how to get it without coming across as a total douche.

Can you believe it? My 20 year high school reunion is coming up next year. I’m actually shocked that it’s happening since the people in my graduating class are so incredibly lazy. (We didn’t have the usual reunions. I think our first one was like 12 years or something like that, and it was some kind of bumpkin hoedown that someone threw together in their back yard, I hear.)

You want to know something else? I don’t really care. I’m not going to go, even if I was next door to where it was being held.

Apparently, where I grew up, if you don’t look like this, it’s a reason for someone to be an asshole towards you.

Why, you ask? It wasn’t because I was bullied every day. There were maybe two or three people who would go out of their way to give me a hard time for, get this, being skinny. That wasn’t every day though. Some people picked up on the asexual/bisexual/gay thing, but no one gave me a hard time about it. Now, there were people who would get teased all the time, but I escaped that for the most part. My “problem” was that I kept to myself a lot. I enjoyed and enjoy my solitude. I had good friends, but they seemed to always be somewhere else at the time.

I don’t go to these things because my high school years were boring. My parents barely let me do anything. I stayed grounded about 95% of the time because I could barely get As and Bs. I’d always come home with a high C, and that was enough to ground me. If I did make As and Bs, then my parents would go out of their way to ground me a day or two later over something trivial. I’m not lying, I got grounded for six weeks for not picking up a sock in the floor. They just didn’t let me do anything. When I played soccer (which I loved, by the way), they’d look for excuses why I couldn’t keep playing. It was just boring.

My teenage years in a nutshell.

So basically, I didn’t have many friends then. I didn’t appreciate how incredibly stupid, racist, and bigoted people could be either. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t drink. I didn’t do any drugs. I didn’t sneak out of the house. I was actually a really good kid. I didn’t/couldn’t do anything so people just didn’t want to have much to do with me. So why would I bother talking to people who I haven’t talked to in over 20 years?

Why would I go to a place where people didn’t bother to try to get to know me? What are the chances that they’d even remember me? How would people react if I showed up with my same-sex partner who’s from a different part of the world? Yeah, I don’t want to risk that. I don’t think people would give him any problems and I would actually love to see the look on their faces. I’d also love to see people surprised that I’m with a man.

They hold these things at incredibly weird times of the year too so that people living in a 30 minute driving radius could make it. They ask me for my input and I basically say, every time, that I don’t go to the USA at other times of the year than November/December. It’s when a lot of people overseas go back home, but they can’t manage that.

And I will never go back home for something as dumb and insignificant as a reunion when I don’t like the area, didn’t like school, and didn’t like the people (except for a handful).

If people want to see me, they’ll have to catch me when I plan to be there, for the most important reason I even go back there: family and my extra special friends who I consider to be my family.

How much freedom do I give my partner and past partners and what are my thoughts on open relationships?

This is a topic that I’ve tried to write about several other times before but haven’t been successful yet. That’s mostly because I didn’t want to come across looking like a total wanker or someone who enjoys being walked all over or someone who just puts up with anything.

Before I continue, if gay people having sex bothers you or you don’t want to know details, stop reading and go do something else.

Whoever dates me or becomes my partner is lucky because I rarely get jealous. I haven’t ever been a jealous person because, to me, that takes too much energy and time. I already get anxious about something simple like what’s for dinner tonight and stuff, so this would just add to my anxiety. I usually have a lot of trust where I assume my partner knows what’s right and wrong. I have the talk with him about if he’s unsure, think about if I did the same thing, would he be upset? That’s what I do now, and that’s probably why I cherish the relationship I’m in now more.

What am I okay with?

As long as my partner tells people up-front that he’s in a relationship, mostly everything is good. If he tells someone he’s single, then I would understandably get upset. This is one of the few things that would make me mad. Basically, he shouldn’t lie about his relationship status.

My partner and I still have personal profiles on sites and we link to each other when possible. Again, as long as he doesn’t pretend like I don’t exist, I’m good. (I do the same.)

I don’t mind if my partner meets other gay guys for dinner, catching up, going to the movies, clubs, and stuff like that. I don’t mind if these guys are exes, old friends, or new guys.

A kiss or touch isn’t really a big deal to me. It’s not something that I’m going to spend too long thinking about.

Sexually, I’ve been in open relationships most of my adult life. This kind of thing doesn’t surprise me anymore because it’s really common. With my current relationship though, I’ve moved away from that and I like having this guy to myself right now. Even if it was an open relationship, I don’t think I’d want to be told about it or asked about it every time. Honestly, it’s a bit of a turn on for me. With my ex, I used to ask him what he’s done and he’d tell me and well, it would lead to us having sex. (That relationship was mostly sexual anyway and we both knew this, so yeah.)

On the subject of open relationships, they work for some people (almost half of gay men have had an open relationship). For most people, I’d like to think, they don’t. That’s okay. Couples that mutually agree to opening their relationship to other sex partners are fine. It’s just when one person of the couple doesn’t know about it that the problem starts. It’s also a problem when deep feelings start to develop for someone (and they do, but I learned to ignore it).

At the end of the day, it’s up to my partner to do the right thing. I trust that he will do the right thing at the right time, especially this guy I’m with now.

I remember when I was a little kid, I’d go over to my grandparents’ house after my grandmother would go to garage sales and buy toys for me, my sister, and cousins. Every so often, she’d pick up some pretty cool things (things I wished I still had).

For some reason, today, I was thinking about one of those games that she got me one time and couldn’t remember what it was called. I knew that it was orange. I knew it was the 80’s. And I knew that it was about spaceships. I searched for all those things and finally came up with the TomyTronic Scramble tabletop game.

This is it, TomyTronic Scramble:

My favorite was when the batteries would start dying and it would do some really incredibly weird things. It would beep, and make a lot of crazy noises when the batteries were dying.

I always thought the missiles and oil tanks were clowns though. They just looked like clowns to me.

Anyway, I really miss going to my grandparents’ house. I miss being a kid sometimes. I kinda wished that I spent more time with my family in general, but you know how it is. Love called. I answered. I’m still here.

All the muscles that have been sore for the past two days. This isn’t even all of them.

I’m going to sound very whiny for a little bit. Of course, I’m going to be whiny because I am in a huge amount of muscular pain.

You see, last week I decided that it would be a good idea for me to get into shape for pictures that I need to take in August/September. I could really stand to get a bit of my chest definition back as well as reduce my belly fat. (I’ll post more about this soon.)

I told myself that my goal until then is to do at least 100 push ups, sit ups, lunges, etc every day and every other day, go swim at my gym.

The first day, I did 40 of each. I did push ups basically until I felt like I couldn’t anymore because if I push myself, I have a big possibility of doing some incredible amounts of damage to my body. I can’t really do that right now, so I stopped. Day 2, I did about 10 of each because I was really sore too. Like, I would lift my arm and it would be a bit sore. Today, I am actually hurting even more. I should take some ibuprofen or something. I should know when to do these things.

I’m supposed to swim this morning, but can’t since I’m expecting a phone delivery. It would have done me a lot of good too. I guess all hope isn’t lost though.

I always hate these first few days of exercise. I get so worked up doing these things that it’s such a bummer when I have to skip a day or two. I could take ibuprofen before I start but if I do that, I will risk working past the pain and can potentially do some really terrible damage to my muscle.

So… okay. Here I am waiting for a phone delivery so that I can go swim or something. I really would love to go today. The hydrotherapy would be perfect on days like this.

My Sony Xperia Z3 is about to get retired/fired/trashed/recycled and I’m really glad. I grew to really hate that thing. The phone had lost its water-proofing failed a few months after I got it because the front cover started to pop off. I wasn’t really rough with it. I just carried it around in my pocket mostly. I didn’t really notice that the water-proofing failed until I tried to take a picture and it came out cloudy. I looked at the lens, and noticed that there was condensation in it. Fun.

The speaker on it started to sound like it was busted. The vibration on it stopped a LONG time ago. The sound from the headphone jack is awful. There are two piss yellow stains on the display. The damned thing’s charging port is on the left side which prevents me from closing it when I charge (totally my fault for not thinking those things over before I buy the cover). Oh, and if you drop it and the screen cracks, it’s totally worthless and expensive to replace.

I got sick of Sony updating the software for it a year after a new Android version was released. (Sony said they weren’t going to update Android anymore a year after I got it.)

Android, however, isn’t bad. I liked seeing widgets on my home screen. I liked to be able to do more with it. I liked how Android felt and operated.

I am done with it.

My two-year contract with my Xperia finished this month. I ended my contract early because the cover/touchscreen is about to pop off for the third time.

Before I had the Xperia, I had an iPhone and looking back, it was a pretty stable, reliable phone. I didn’t have any major problems with it like I did with the Sony phone. I mean, the phone started swelling, so that’s why I ditched it. Come to find out, it just needed a new battery. I gave it to my ex and he’s still using it.

I decided to get an iPhone again, but it’s not one that people would expect. One of the annoying things about the phone I have now is that it’s an uncomfortable size. I can’t really use it with one hand (and before anybody thinks something naughty, there are plenty of times I needed to pick my nose with the other hand). I’m getting the iPhone SE. I’m getting the 128 GB sized one.

I am wanting to get less obsessed with my phone. I look around now on the trains, trams, and buses and see people with their heads down. People are going to dinner with their eyes fixed on a phone. I figure that a smaller phone will make me look at it a lot less. I feel like it will improve my relationships with other people because I know that I’m guilty at playing with my phone in social settings.

The front camera on it is horrible though but I don’t care.

It’s also over $20 cheaper per month than what I had before. That saved money can go towards bulking powder or pizza.

I’m also hoping to get one of the new 27″ iMacs and I know that having both a Mac and iPhone is a nice pair. I refuse to use that thing with a Windows PC.

I know half the month has already passed, but I wanted to say Happy Pride Month to you! I don’t hear much about a pride month here in Australia. I don’t know why and I could be wrong. There’s a lot of stuff that I don’t know. If you have read any of my previous posts, you’ll know that by now.

Anyway, I thought I would go into story-telling mode for this one.

The Background

I grew up in a town in Texas that has a population of around 10,000 people. A lot of, if not all of, the people living there are insanely religious. So basically, their way of life is superior to anybody else’s. It was basically a place where you didn’t want to be openly gay. You especially didn’t want to be caught in an interracial relationship. These two things, if I stayed there long-term, would have made my life miserable. I don’t think I would ever get to do the things that I’ve done if I stayed there. I just had to get out of there as soon as I could. It took me a little while, but I finally left.

Figuring Out Who I Was

I’m not one of those people where I can say that I realized that I liked other men when I was a kid. I know some people can say that they knew when they were gay when they were 8 or something like that. I don’t think that’s really possible, but okay. I think growing up, I just didn’t really care. Like, seriously. I didn’t care up until my final year of high school. I had girlfriends, but I only had them because all the other guys did. I didn’t put much effort into them. At the same time, I didn’t secretly lust over any guys either or have any guy crushes.

It kind of clicked for me when one of my friends who was on the football team used to show me his legs. He was really muscular and he’d shave his legs. After he shaved them, he’d tell me to feel how smooth they were. Of course, I did. That was probably my first crush. I realized that there was a possibility that I liked guys, but I largely ignored it. My friend would invite me over to hang out and stuff, but I didn’t do it because I was just a little afraid that this crush would make me fall in love with him (and in a way, I think I did).

I stopped fighting it when I was around 17 and said to myself “It’s possible that I like guys.” In my last few weeks of high school, I started “dating” someone, again, who played football. He went around telling everybody that we were a “happy” couple. It was very brave for a football player in high school to admit that he liked guys, especially in a small town. Since I only had a few more weeks left of high school, I didn’t give a crap. I pretty much knew that I was getting the hell out of my hometown the first chance I got so I could live in peace.

Thankfully, I was never bullied that much. No one wanted to beat my ass and no one threatened me. No one said much, even after that “boyfriend” I had told everybody. Sure, some people would say things every so often because I was a tall, skinny guy. If you didn’t look like you were corn-fed and have a gut, that meant that you were probably into men. I just took care of myself, that’s all.

My Sexuality

I’ve never had any dislike or disgust with women or their parts. I just don’t see that happening. Even while I lived here, I talked to them and dated, but I didn’t push anything. I was a very gentlemanly guy to date.

I just don’t go out of my way to find women. I haven’t for a while. I just don’t think it would be fair for me to be with anybody, male or female, and have someone else on the side. An example: getting married to a woman, but having a relationship with a guy. It’s a pick one or the other kind of thing. My choice for a long time has been men. If that makes think I’m only gay, fine. If it makes me bisexual, whatever. I am who I am.

I’m basically not going to wake up tomorrow morning with an undying need to be with a woman. I’m okay with this. I’m not going to regret getting married to a man.

Why Pride?

Having pride is about spreading hope. It’s a way to celebrate things getting better and improving, but at the same time, remembering what people in the past have done and the lives that were lost to get to this point. I feel like a same-sex marriage rights are there because of gay pride. It’s about accepting myself as who I am and not feeling like a monster for it (of course, that depends where you are and how vocal people around you are).

It’s taken time to realize who I am and to be okay with it. I don’t think I could have done that in my small little hometown. I don’t think I would ever been able to come so far in my life like this. I basically just feel like it’s not my problem if someone doesn’t like me if I like other men and will marry one some day. Life is too short to be worrying about if someone’s going to marry someone of the same sex.

Concluding

Yeah, I had to add this little section because a few seconds ago, I was thinking about what this post is about. I think I went all over the place. Oops. Well, it gives you a little more information about how I feel about being gay (or whatever). I hope one day people are treated equally and it becomes illegal in the USA, in all states, to discriminate against people just for who they love. (You can still get fired in Texas if your employer finds out your gay. Seriously. I don’t think it would happen often, but I’m sure it does… and that’s stupid.)